he brings great skill set to the job with a master's from yale, he's also a fulbright scholar, an alfred p. sloan fellow. at chicago his main areas of study were tax policy, american industry, technology and innovation. in other words, he's a great chief economist for the president. on that note, austan, i would like to give you -- hold on -- the executive summary from the conference so far. [laughter] sorry. so the executive summary is you've got your work cut out for you. [laughter] we have had many, we have many challenges, some new, and many who took years and actually decades to be created. we started the conference with release of the nabe policy survey, and it shows that our membership believes tackling the deficit is the policy challenge of today. 87% of our members, and these are business economists, support the simpson-bowles commission recommendations. but dealing with the deficit is not going to be easy. it's actually going to be a pure heroic act. 71% of our members believe that there will be no progress on the deficit this year. on our political panel yesterday, we learned